So you'd swap HS2 for a high speed line within Wales?
No. I don't think I suggested anything of the sort. Just any sort of line at all would do! And do you reckon linking Aber with, say, Llandovery to link down to Cardiff would cost £33bn?
Regarding the M6 Toll, if the toll was removed (or even if the toll was lowered to a more acceptable amount), then the road would get much more patronage that it currently does.
And of course, the taxpayer would pick up the bill.
Look at the current train costs. Booking a day or few ahead, here are the prices from BHM to London:
Taking 2nd March, offpeak:
Cheapest return, fast, BHM to EUS 1h22m = £64
OR
2h25mins on London Midland return for £17.50
(Yes, the London Midland trains seem to have discomfort designed into them and it's not much fun, but if you're skint and there's a £70 saving in it, as there sometimes is, it's a no-brainer).
So what do you think a ticket on the new faster line will cost? People who can't afford the fast line now won't be able to afford an even more costly line in 20 years.
Regarding your £60b figure (where the hell did you get that from btw?)
I'm just being realistic. The quoted figure is £33bn. Let's look at recent history:
Scottish Parliament Building: Original Estimate in 1997 c£10m-£40m
Opening date set at May 2003. Actual opening date October 2005. Final cost: £414.4m
London 2012 Olympics: Original quote: £2.4bn
Currently stands at: £9.3bn (security alone will be £1.5bn)
Main olympic stadium: 2004 original quote: £282m. Feb 2009: £547M. Now: ???
NHS computer: Original estimate £6.4bn. Stood unfinished at £20bn in 2009. Now: ???
Then there's Metronet and Railtrack. It's not just money they can't figure out.
Apparently, a maximum of 11,000 workers would come in from Eastern Europe, said the government.
What is it now? 3 million?
Or the helicopters which can't fly in fog, or the fighter jets which are so over-budget and late that it's cheaper to cut them up for the scrap than finish building them?
Any large government project usually ends up being a disaster. OK, so Labour have been the worst offender, especially for the railways, with their obsession with bonkers pfi/ppp scheme and their lies about reducing fares. But this government doesn't seem to have grown a pair either, and all the governments in between now and when the project is finished are going to be just as wasteful.
So maybe £60bn is being optimistic. I'll say £70bn and 5 years late.
Put 2026 in your diary, look me up. We'll see how the project is going and what the finances are looking like, eh?
How's the Channel Tunnel working out, by the way?
The joy of a connection inevitably missed?
Bloody hell.. there are many ways to argue that HS2 itself may not solve everything or bring us world peace - but do you have to try and paint a picture that suggests rail is so useless there's no point trying?
[...] journey to work involving traffic or delays that made a 30 mile journey take over two hours. As against around 30 minutes by train, with my feet up (not literally!) reading my Kindle, playing Angry Birds on my mobile or doing some work on my MacBook.
Eh? Are we reading a different thread?
I said I'd much rather take the train, but for me doing a massive "Z" shape across the country is not an option compared with driving. The train is more expensive and totally impractical for my Aber > Bristol trips. But for Aber > London (even when not booked much in advance) I'd be mad to drive.
My point was that from Bham to London, there are already 3 different routes you can take, 3 or 4 different operators and fares for £6 to £196.
Wouldn't it be better getting some infrastructure where there is none?
Finally, I don't know (or care) why HS2 advertises itself purely on speed. But, who cares? The fact is, any idiot can work out the capacity benefits. You've heard it here and must have some common sense, even if you feel the need to exaggerate scenarios to make HS2 sound worse, so surely you accept the capacity argument is stronger than speed?
What's the difference in spacing required between trains running at 250mph vs the current speed?
I can't remember what it was, but I distinctly remember hearing the extra capacity argument being quite tidily demolished with some fairly comprehensive figures on Radio 4 in the evening, must've been around 6 months ago, almost certainly on PM.
The day that someone shows me solid figures regarding capacity, claimed savings in carbon emissions, REAL WORLD project passenger figures and an absolute guarantee from contractors on any tender, I'll happily eat my hat.
Until then, I predict it'll go the same way as every other unthought out pet project - a series of private contractors will cream off huge profits, hold the project to ransom, go bankrupt, agreements will be redrawn and the whole thing will come in 5 or 10 years overdue, at least 200% over-budget and be just another millennium dome.
This feels like arguing with pro-solar PV subsidy types. "Look, stop talking about figures, it's a great idea! Yes, I know the figures have been based on an entirely different latitude and a theoretical maximum output which is never achieved and I know that inverter and transmission losses haven't been taken into account, nor have maintenance and panel degradation costs or that fact that the power is generated at precisely the wrong time and in fact this will mean not one single watt of generator capacity can be taken offline. Just ignore all that annoying finance and physics nonsense and love it, or we'll brand you a planet-raping fascist!". (That's actually not too much of an exaggeration of a typical argument. I really feel for anti-PV campaigner George Monbiot sometimes!)
Really, some of the arguments feel not that much different here. The goalposts of the purpose of the line seem to keep moving, and we're just supposed to ignore the financial side of things. Sorry, this is 2011. We've had that kind of thinking for 13 years and it broke the country. Next?
Got the dates in the diary? If Google Calendar is still around in 2026 to remind me, let's talk then...
